First up, we weren't satisfied with the industrial, galvanized steel look, so we took advantage of a couple moderate days and painted the handrail and think it looks sharp.
The new bookcase is getting some design work that is in process. Every surface got a coat of clear stain to seal the wood and a few parts got their second and final coat. The spackle is meant to keep the knots in the wood from showing through.
We also stained the shelves clear. These are ready to go.
We also turned our attention back to the laundry hamper. With the stiles done and the legs sanded clean, we cut the legs to our desired 24 inches, like so.
Then we used the router to finish digging out the holes for the connecting dowel rods in the cross pieces...
and the legs...
For the legs we used a similar set up to hold them in place and marked the top holes at .5 and 1.5 inches from the end (to match the holes on the cross piece) and the bottom ones 4.5 and 5.5 inches from the end (ditto and to place the bottom piece 4 inches from the floor). So this...
became this...
Next up was to carve out the channel for the bottom, which will be .5-inch plywood. Our first choice was to use the router but it really didn't handle the wood well (we'll have to look into that). The fall back was to use a technique we'd seen online--set the table saw at a desired height (.375 inches in our case) and run our inch-thick piece over it several times, like so...
to create this...
With everything ready, it was time to field test the whole thing to see if our measurements and holes were exact enough. Here's the short version without the stiles. We had already identified which pieces we like for the front, side, and back, so we planned out which leg went in each corner.
We added some stiles and dowel rods to prove the concept. Even without glue it can stand on its own four feet.
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